Topicality and the typology of predicative possession

Abstract

Abstract Recent accounts on the typology of predicative possession, including those by Stassen, recognise a Topic Possessive type with the possessee coded like the figure in an existential predication, and the possessor coded as a topic that is not subcategorised by the predicate and is not related to any syntactic position in the comment, literally: As for Possessor, there is Possessee. The Asian region is explicitly singled out as being a Topic Possessive area. On the basis of a sample of 71 languages from the four main language families of continental East and Southeast Asia – Sino-Tibetan, Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic, contrary to these previous accounts of the distribution of the main types of predicative possession in the world’s languages, we argue that this area should rather be considered as showing a particularly high concentration of Have-Possessives, with the additional particularity that the verbs occurring in the Have-Possessive constructions in this linguistic area are polysemous verbs also used for existential predication. After briefly reviewing Stassen’s typology of predicative possession, we discuss his account of the Topic Possessive type and then present five arguments for considering why the possessor NP of the existential/possessive verbyǒu有 in Standard Mandarin Chinese cannot be analysed as invariably occupying the position of a topic, and consequently, that the construction should be reclassified as an instance of the Have-Possessive type. In the final sections, the situation is examined for other Southeast Asian languages showing the same configuration for predicative possession and existential predication as Standard Mandarin, to the extent that data is available.

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